what you don't like in Fallout 4

[CosmicArrow]

I think FO4 is a good game but there are a lot of problems that bug the crap out of me like poor AI pathing, bad optimization for certain graphical settings and the lackluster dlc which I feel like I will be forced to buy later on because some mods require them like the Unofficial Patch. Not to mention Beth will probably release a special edition like they did with Skyrim and you will need all the dlc to get a free copy... if they do that again.

 

If I had a nickle for every time I've had a problem with the AI getting stuck or wigging out in a Beth game I'd have enough money to donate $100 to every mod author whose mod I use and then build me a new rig. Beth seriously needs to build a new engine for their games with better AI functionality/graphical optimization and you think they would with Skyrim and FO4 money.

 

Optimization is pretty bad for certain features in this game and a good example is the god rays which when turned off gives me 20-30 fps on a gtx 970. Out in most parts of the game I get a smooth 60 fps with just Shadows on high and V-sync turned off but in the city area I get a 20 fps loss randomly. :\

 

Then there is the dlc which is completely overpriced and adds nothing worthwhile to the base game save for Far Harbor. I've been getting this feeling for the past few years that Beth has been falling out of touch with its fan base since Skyrim because of the Zenimax suits.

 

I know this thread is on the negative side but there are things I like about the game like the gun system, world design and some characters.

[Daynen]

I think the core thing to take away from a thread like this is that there are things we hate about the game BECAUSE we love the game at it's core. It's easy to look at a crappy game and find a hundred things wrong, but then you move on and don't care. When it's a game you care about to begin with and want very badly to enjoy, those failings jump right out at you and nag endlessly. I can think of dozens of games I've played just in recent years that I loved, but desperately wished could fix a few things. Even just one or two things, tweaked or fixed, could elevate these games to the fame they deserve. FO4, sadly, rode in on fame from it's predecessors and then fell short. This is why these problems hurt so much; our expectations were set so much higher.

[JagMaker]

Of course, it's very bad that Bethesda touched the core of the game, touched it and spoiled it. I'm not talking about minor flaws, I'm talking about the basis of fallout.

"Hey, Bethesda, we do not like that quests are boring and dialogues are not thought out." It's not fallout style "- Of course, here's a Workshop for you.

"Hey, Bethesda, the game was very unbalanced in terms of gameplay." It's not fallout style "- of course, here's another workshop for you.

"Hey, Bethesda, we do not feel a big world, the territory can be traversed in 15 minutes in a diagonal." It's not a fallout style "- sure, here is a workshop for you, now you can build a Roller coaster.

"Hey, Bethesda, we did not manage to lie to ourselves and recognize Fallout 4 as a cool game." It's not a Fallout. " - We have something for you: now you can buy a mod of power armor with a horse's head.

[JagMaker]

What do I hate about Fallout 4? Hoo boy, buckle up scavvers...I'm goin' in.

 

I don't like the complete lack of basic sense displayed by all AI's, friend or foe. I got rid of Dogmeat after the third time he jumped in front of my molotov toss and got me killed--and that's AFTER about the tenth time he ran in front of a corpse/container I was trying to loot putting me in command mode on accident. Friends and enemies display no decision-making capability whatsoever. "He can hit me when I'm shooting from this cover, so...(six seconds later) I'll just duck lower!" I aim lower. "I have tons of hitpoints, so I should be able to bumrush him before he instantly kills me with that sniper rifle!" I activate VATS and crit him for 90%...and he's still coming. Followers consume ammo like crackers...unless it's for THEIR weapon. Settlers don't consume ammo...but need to have one--ONE--of the right type in their inventory to use the weapon you tell them to...or they just run and snag one from your storage. You have no idea how long it took me to find my favorite combat rifle that one time...There's no consistency in AI behavior or NPC interaction; there's barely even a set of rules to govern them at all. They also commonly, actively, OBSESSIVELY block doorways; I've actually seen them appear in the distance as I approach my building and drop whatever they're doing to run to the doorway I plan to enter. I wish I was making this up, I swear...made me want to mow them down with lasers. At least back in Morrowind it was due to a spawn bug that caused stationary NPC's to "drift." In FO4, they ACTIVELY MOVE TO BLOCK THE DOORS. It's blood-boiling. In fact, the only thing that IS consistent about NPC's is their atrocious aim. It's like they're stuck in VATS in real time and have about a 20% chance to hit at all times. Not enemies though; once they engage you they're filling you with holes. It's *censored* and makes you hate your settlers and turrets more than any enemy in the game.

 

Speaking of which, VATS sucks. Yeah I said it, you wanna make somethin' of it?! I don't care how much of a Fallout "tradition" it is. It needs to go. It turns any semblance of gunplay into Baldur's Gate. Pause action, gauge RNG situation, roll dice, hope for a critic--OWAIT, you can just STORE CRITICALS!--then wait for AP to recharge. WTF. You want to talk about immersion breaking? Two words: Blitz perk. VATS is the single biggest offender in the vanilla game for me, because it affects so much of the game in a horrible way.

 

 

I don't care how much people liked Skyrim; perks need to go. A major chunk of them only affect passive stats--and arbitrary ones like damage and resistance at that. Some do cool things or give you new tricks, but too many are just crafting unlocks(which put you behind on the power curve until you can fully utilize them) or passive combat buffs (which delay your ability to make cool stuff, especially in terms of settlement building.) It's all so vertical on the power curve and so damn boring. I want skill growth back. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with Morrowind; you make only a few core choices at the beginning and your character grows according to your playstyle. Perks and the SPECIAL system throw that out the window. Refine it, tune it, modernize it for practicality's sake, whatever; reconnect character growth to playstyle, ASAP. Let perks be special little rewards we get for certain accomplishments, sticking to certain playstyles, using certain equipment, or DOING SOMETHING, not just ranks in our magical superpowers.

 

 

The concept of the pipboy (which gives us VATS) has so many more possibilities that we haven't explored in the slightest. It could've had a wireless connection to your helmet or eyewear to give you tactical info; it could've been used to interface with so many more devices, it could have been modifiable with new skins, different functions and buttons; it could've done so much more, but in the end it's just a skin for the inventory menu--AND WE CAN'T EVEN TAKE IT OFF. That's tragic for something that's so core to the series and we EVEN GOT A LIMITED EDITION REAL PHYSICAL PIPBOY. People actually got a REAL one, but it's relegated to a pause menu in gameplay? Come on now...

 

 

Speaking of pipboys, one thing they do that I hate...map based fast travel is a plague on modern gaming. I'm all for getting places fast and not wasting the player's time, but that shouldn't be just a magical power that lets you time travel ten hours into the future to pop up on the other end of the map. Tie it to something in the world so there's at least some verisimilitude; a bike, a plane, a subway, a caravan, a boat, SOMETHING. It's teleportation no matter how you skin it, so it needs to be treated as a powerful privilege, just like intervention or recall spells. I appreciated getting fast travel to the Institute in survival mode because it was a reward. I like the APC mod because it takes fuel and repairs to make use of it. I was quite happy to figure out the best way to use the Mage's guild, the silt striders, the boats, two intervention spells and the mark and recall spell, because they gave me a teleportation grid that took responsible use to apply properly; they actually made you want to learn your way around and learn where things were so your travel took you where you wanted. Automatic fast travel has made players and devs alike lazy, plain and simple.

 

 

The "modifications" of gear are not modifications; they're buffs for the most part, plain and simple. Most of them don't change the functionality of your weapon or gear in any way; they just up damage, ammo count, recoil, or resistance numbers. I DID appreciate that bigger and better mods were heavier, but I was dismayed at the lack of options for even the simplest things like pouches or holsters on clothing or armor, or perhaps barrel-mounted flashlights on weapons. the pip-boy light is nice and all, but a more directed light is useful in lots of situations. Also, so many items were simply not moddable when they could've been. The most a weapon mod ever did to actually CHANGE a weapon's function was to give it full-auto. Everything else was stat changes. That's not modifications; that's just upgrades, which quickly became mandatory due to absurd vertical scaling of the game's "difficulty." Only the pipe weapons were able to change a pistol to a rifle or vice-versa and let's face it; nobody sticks with pipe weapons for a second longer than they have to unless they're RP'ing.

 

The "false" third dimension. Here's a little secret for you: The Commonwealth is a two dimensional world with unpathable terrain. There are no "walls;" just places where you can't walk or shoot through. Walls can be climbed; walls can be broken through; we can do neither of those things. When's the last time you climbed a ladder (not counting instance doors?) NEVER. For all the height differences we encounter in the game, it makes me sad that we get no vertical options other than "find the elevator" or "jump down and hope you don't die from fall damage." How scary was that first deathclaw in concord? How scary was he when you figured out he wouldn't follow you into the museum, allowing you to gun him down with impunity from the balcony? Yeah, I was pretty disappointed in that.

 

Settlement building aggravates me. Not because it sucks, but because it comes SO CLOSE to being an incredible part of the game...and then trips over the finish line with irreparable bugs, a total disconnect from the rest of the game, a lack of functionality in very odd and very arbitrary areas...and did I mention the bugs? I gave up on Contraptions even though I was having a ton of fun with it, not because it was completely unnecessary, but because items wouldn't stop falling through the conveyors and floors when I left. An engine flaw, I'm told, which means no setup or workaround can beat it and no mod on earth can fix it, save action from Bethesda itself. Slow clap there, Beth...

 

I didn't notice the problems with the dialogue wheel at first, but after having it pointed out, I now see it for what it is: an excuse to get some voice line delivery in the game. Now, TO BE FAIR, I DO love the actual voice acting in the game; for the most part it is absolutely top-notch and a joy to my ears. Characters sound completely in the moment with their lines and I actually feel real expression when I hear them. I've got a crush on Piper, Nora's natural sultry tone is sexy as hell, nick has the gumshoe detective schtick absolutely nailed to a T, Nate sounds like I probably would if I was in his situation, Codsworth sounds more emotional than most english anime dubs of the last decade, Cait makes me wanna go start a bar brawl (and subsequent shag session) with that Irish sass of hers...it goes on and on. Preston is the only one so far that sounds even a LITTLE flat; even then it's still better than most of the voice acting I've heard in games lately...

 

Which is why it's a little bit lame that your only options in dialogue are to be positive, inquisitive, or sarcastic. The only time these really diverged was when you faced down Kellogg and those felt really good to say too. Mind you, this usually aligns with my nature anyway, which is why I didn't fault it for so long, but the fact remains: Conversations are only choice trees when a little persuasion XP is on the line and even then there's no interaction or player skill involved: you either pass the dice roll or you don't. I really hoped we'd be past that in 2015, much less 2017...

 

Also once again, just like in Skyrim and to a lesser extent Oblivion, we're bereft of any mentionable underwater gameplay. We even have a WATERBREATHING PERK, FFS. I can think of one time I actually went underwater and that was at Thicket Excavations...which was later drained of water anyway!! WHY, BETHESDA? We have perks that turn water from deadly to home ground in a mere two points, yet we have barely any water worth swimming in, let alone any reason to actually do so? Morrowind had shipwrecks, underwater caves and temples galore; starting as an Argonian or getting a waterbreathing item actually MEANT something there! We could have scuba suits, oxygen tanks, underwater headlamps, flippers, hell we already GOT a harpoon gun in Far Harbor! Where's the mutant sharks? Where's the sunken battleships and plane wrecks? Where's the mutated squid and buried treasure? We have all these methods of making the water traversible and could easily have even more cool tools for the water, but no threats or incentives to go in it! WHERE'S THE WATER, BETH?

 

 

On the subject of having lots of cool gear...ever since Oblivion, equipment in Bethesda games has been getting stripped away, to the detriment of mix-and-matchers everywhere (and I KNOW we're everywhere, because mods exist.) We went from having: helmet, necklace, two rings, shirt, pants, boots, skirt, robe, chest armor, leg armor, a SEPARATE left and right pauldron, bracer, and gauntlet slot, plus a weapon and/or shield(which, to be fair, was extremely granular) to having single, full body outfits/armor that don't work with ANYTHING (save for their precious pip-boy.) We've been gradually losing variety in our equipment choices and it's honestly getting a bit irksome. Let's just pole vault over the stats and balance argument and admit that we all like to rock our own style from time to time. Far too often in FO4, we just can't. Mods alleviate this drastically, but then we have to learn how to use bodyslide, outfit studio, etc etc. or face the horrors of clipping and mismatched clothing sizes. God help your eyes if you can't get things sized juuuuuust right...

 

Okay I need to stop...

Thanks, mate!, posts like this really help in the work

[Evangela]

Wow that guy really wasted his money on the game.

[wonkehcheetah]

I hate that I spend 5 million hours modding the game, play it for like 20 minutes, then spend another 5 million hours looking into more mods. I eventually delete the save and start over because I need to remove a mod with scripts to get another with different scripts, I never actually beat fallout 4 as a result, and I'm forced to reply the first few missions over and OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

[TheMightyArchaon]

wow that must be horrible to start over because of scripts

[purplis]

I don't like loading screens(especially intro,even with mod which disables it,still to slow),and reading same tips while screen is loading,someone could make a mod which adds some new tips(like thousand of them)

The game itself is PERFECT!

Edited September 9, 2017 by purplis

[maverikch]

can't tell that i hate fallout 4 because 1500+ hours of gaming tells me something else.

maybe i had stopped playing after one play through as with many games and this is because of the mods though.

 

and i spent most of time with settlement building.

 

though what i hate the most of FO4 is: babysitting everything / being the only focus of the world.

 

i think the next fallout game should be Fallout Settlement Manager :D

[Deleted3082751User]

the incompleteness of the game

Edited September 12, 2017 by Guest